


Fever Dream

by heihua



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-10 18:01:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2034681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heihua/pseuds/heihua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yuuya is sick. At least, that's his excuse for why he keeps seeing Akaba Reiji.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fever Dream

Yuuya is sick.

Not the kind of " _it's just a small cold with a bit of runny nose and sore throat, you'll be fine in a couple of days with some rest and food_ " sick but the " _you're running a fever high enough to fry your brain and if you try to do anything outside of sleeping you're going to feel like you're being slowly tortured to death_ " kind of sick.

Despite that, Yuuya remains sitting where he is: a bench in one of the many parks in Miami City, eyes glazed as he stares at a certain point in nowhere.

Faintly, he wonders if there's anyone looking for him. It's a Sunday so there was no school, Duel School included. His mom hadn't suspected a thing when he told her he was going out for the day but his fever hadn't been nearly as bad and the fact that he was the walking dead hadn't been as obvious then. Now, there was nothing he could do to hide it.

But what was stopping him from going home and resting? Logically, that was the best thing for him to do if he wanted to feel well enough to go to school tomorrow. Yet he doesn't. He remains sitting.

What is stopping him, exactly?

Yuuya doesn't know it himself. He can't put it into words but he feels that if he were to return home to rest it would be the same as admitting defeat. Who he was admitting defeat to, not even he understood but the all too familiar sense of failure, of not being good enough and forever being remembered as the son of the "former champion who ran away" creeps into his fever-addled brain and refuses to leave.

It's a futile, pointless battle but Yuuya has been fighting a hopeless battle for a long time now (three years, two months and five days if he wants to count and remind himself, which he never wants to but his mind does anyways, sick or not) that the utter idiodicy of what he is doing never quite registers.

Even as he feels his heavy eyelids close, as his body finally gives up on him, he still does not understand.

He finally falls asleep, a fluttering red scarf in the small afternoon breeze the last thing he sees.

 

When Yuuya wakes up, his eyes do not open. He is awake, no longer dreaming but the darkness still hugs him close. He breathes through his leaden nose and mouth even though it doesn't feel like he's breathing at all.

Sleeping in overly warm molasses, Yuuya thinks, is the best way to describe how he's feeling right now. Something's off though, something so inherent that it takes Yuuya a long, long moment to realize what it is. His thoughts finally manage to string themselves together enough for him to realize what it is.

He's not in the park anymore.

Unless the city had decided to replace all of their park benches with soft downy beds that included internal heating, he was definitely not in the park and very likely somewhere else that was indoors.

The question of who found him and moved him to a bed does not occur to him, the toll of the fever on his body too great for him to think of anything but how much his body aches.

He falls back asleep.

 

 

When he wakes up again, a band of cold material is pressed against his forehead. The relief he feels from such a contrast is enough to make him open his eyes.

His vision is blurry; all he sees are streaks of colors, the brightness of them muted by the wetness in his eyes.

Even then, he recognizes the purple, the red and dark blue (he doesn't think he'll ever forget, no matter how sick he gets).

"I know you..." he murmurs, voice tiny and hoarse.

The colors say nothing in return, only smoothing the compress against his skin.

Yuuya falls back asleep, the colors melting back into black.

 

 

The third time he wakes up, he's much more lucid.

His body still aches but breathing is just a little less difficult—he won't say it's easy, just yet—and the world when he opens his eyes is much clearer.

The colors are no longer blurred together, but take shape and human form.

The third time he wakes up, Akaba Reiji is sitting on the edge of the bed. There's a tray on the bedside table too, carrying a single small bowl of soup, a glass of water and two blue pills.

Akaba says nothing, not even in remark to seeing Yuuya awaken. He merely takes hold of Yuuya's shoulders to help bring him into sitting position.

Yuuya's breaths fall out, harsher and faster, upon exertion which Akaba does not fail to notice. He eases the burden of making Yuuya sit all the way upright by propping some large pillows behind Yuuya's back for him to lean against.

Akaba contines to remain silent as he picks up the small bowl and the spoon in it. He blows on the spoonful of soup with the patience and calmness of one who has complete control of the situation.

For Yuuya, reality is still as surreal as any fever dream he is experiencing so he finds it difficult to form comprehensible questions for Akaba. Akaba isn't bothered in the least and while that should disturb Yuuya on some level, he does nothing but open his mouth when Akaba brings the spoon closer to him.

The soup is bland, but warm and hearty—the combination Yuuya's body desperately craves after what feels like a year of starvation.

Yuuya wants to ask if Akaba had made the soup himself but Akaba feeds him with smooth, precise movements that give Yuuya no space to speak in between swallows. And when he's finished the soup, Akaba already has the glass of water and pills held out to him before he really has time to gather himself.

As much as he should be asking about Akaba's motives for helping him, all Yuuya's mind can think of is how much better he would feel with some medicine to ease his pain. He swallows the pills with the glass of water and the exhaustion immediately returns to grab ahold of him.

Akaba eases him back into lying position, his hold firm but not painful.

Never once, does Akaba's expression change. It is the same calm, stoic expression he wore the majority of the time during their duel and it makes Yuuya think of unmovable fortresses and the armored samurais in Gongenzaka's deck.

Sleepiness cedes into his consciousness but in the lull right before the exhaustion becomes strong enough to pull him into sleep, Yuuya manages to whisper a single word.

"Why?"

Perhaps it's a trick of the light but Yuuya is almost certain Akaba's lips curve into a small smile. But whatever answer Akaba has to his question, Yuuya does not hear it.

 

 

He regain consciousness a fourth time but so briefly that Yuuya will never be sure if the hand that touches his cheek is part of a dream or not.

 

 

The last time he wakes up in the unfamiliar bed with Akaba Reiji by his side, Yuuya asks the question again.

"Why?" His body still aches far too much for him to get out of bed, let alone sit up to face Akaba. He meets Akaba's gaze, knowing it's the least he can do.

"Because," Akaba says. "Your dream hasn't ended."

 

 

Yuuya opens his eyes and he is back home again.

A fever dream, he concludes. It's not impossible, considering how unwell he was feeling. Hallucinating Akaba Reiji taking care of him in lieu of his mother was bizarre but it would explain why dream Akaba Reiji spoke so little.

He begins to wonder if he had even made it to the park that day and he hadn't simply collapsed at home. He must have, he realizes, because there was no other way to explain the absurdity of having _Akaba Reiji_ of all people, nursing him back to health.

He gets up from his bed, slowly with cramped, unused muscles slowly adjusting to movement again and hobbles over to the door. He can hear his mother humming from downstairs, most likely preparing dinner (is it dinner? he briefly glances at the clock above his bed and sees that yes, it is dinner time).

"Hey mom," he calls out as his feet hit the floor, the wooden boards cold against his toes and he curls his toes inward instinctively.

Yoko brightens as she catches sight of her son, looking a little bleary but no longer fever-ridden. "Yuuya, you're up! How are you feeling?"

"I'm okay." He yawns. "A little hungry; that soup you gave me before wasn't really that filling."

Yoko frowns, puzzled. "I never fed you any soup."

Yuuya pauses, mid-yawn. "What? Of course you did mom. When my fever was really high and I couldn't eat myself. You gave me some medicine, too!"

Yoko only looks on, puzzlement spreading across her face. "By the time you came home, your fever was almost all but gone. You were sleeping like a log, though, so neither your friend nor I bothered trying to wake you up."

"My friend?" Was she talking about Gongenzaka? Yuzu?

"Your friend that brought you home," she says, then grins. "He was quite a handsome fellow too. I had no idea you had become such close friends with such a polite, well-mannered boy. And here I thought Gongenzaka-kun was the only male friend you had that was your age!"

"Huh?"

"He even left something for you." Yoko points towards the living room couch.

Sitting there, draped across the arm of the love seat, was a long red scarf.

**Author's Note:**

> this is so cliche and corny good bye


End file.
